Firsth: thank you for your reviews. I really appreciate them! I will update wth two chapters today, so you will have something to accuse me on Saturday when it is my turn at the GG Fanfiction chat-a-thon. You can find the link ito further informations in my profile and I hope to see you there.

Thanks to Grizzly for betaing the chapters!


Chapter 6

Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
Your voice has chased away all the sanity in me

The gravel crunched under my feet and the cane. With every step an additional crunch is audible when the wood meets the small stones.

Left and right the way is bordered with grass that looks nearly black now. It is glistening in the cold and keeps glaring at me.

If Kirk could see this he would surely be scared again. He was scared of everything and the older he got the stranger he became.

We could have never imagined that it was possible for him to become more eccentric, but as it turns out it was.

He had always wanted his sandwiches slightly burned, but when he got older they had to be black. Though he could only live out that eccentric side when he was in the diner, because Lulu resembled Mrs. Gleason more and more.

In my opinion she had every right though, because she was married to Kirk and god knows that he needed a strong hand to guide him.

As bizarre as his life was, his death was more so.When he was a little bit older than sixty, he was running through the night, again haunted by assassins, and made it on top of a roof from which he jumped yelling "I am Dracula". What did assassins have to do with Dracula? That was Kirk!

His son did him credit though and Kirk and Mrs. Gleason were reincarnated in Lulu and Kirk junior. I am not exaggerating.

Josh was grounded more than once because he had beaten up Kirk junior or had threatened to do so.

Lulu always came running when that had happened, followed closely by Kirk and Kirk junior. If Lorelai hadn't disagreed I would have probably just patted Josh on the shoulder and said "Well done". I mean I beat up Kirk more than once when we were kids. 'Like father, like son,' I would say, but Lorelai didn't want to hear that, although she always burst out laughing as soon as we were alone and Josh was upstairs in his room.

It was a similar thing with Liz's daughter Doula who was thrown out of Layna's room several times, although she was older. Doula is a sweet girl, but she resembles her mother too much. She just starts talking without thinking and together with TJ's words of wisdom, it's a fatal combination

Yet she went to College and works as a psychologist today. In my opinion all psychologists need one themselves and my niece is no exception, which is not surprising when you consider her parents.

It's been ten years now since Liz and TJ died in another car crash. If you get as old as I am you learn to say goodbye, although it's not always possible to get over the loss. Zach and Lane had to learn that lesson early in their lives when their third kid died shortly after birth. The twins are doing great though and they are both working in the diner now, keeping the place up and running, while Lane and Zach are on another tour with their band.

Funerals are getting as common as going to the movies and I often ask myself how many more I have to endure until my own one will arrive.

That is how it must be if you live forever. It's a goal that more and more young people seem to have, but for me the thought alone is a nightmare.

To live forever.

What they are not aware of is that all the people you love are dying and you're still there, alone with all the memories of better and happier times.

I am glad that we all have to die.

I have seen so many people in this town go that weren't even family.

Miss Patty was the first one to die. They said her heart just stopped beating. Another rumor said it was her liver. I don't know about that, I am just sure of one thing: She is dead.

East side Tilly followed shortly after her and even Taylor didn't living that long after her death, although I would have sworn that he would still be there to harass my great-grandchildren. They said that Patty's death affected him deeply and that they had a better, let's say relationship, than it seemed at first. I don't really want to think about that.

Andrew died surprisingly young after an operation and Gypsy died from an electric shock when she tried to repair one of those new cars, without any idea what she was doing.

Kirk jumped off the roof and Babette and Morey died shortly after their last cat passed away. All three of them are buried in one grave; Taylor would have had a fit!

Involuntarily I have to laugh when I think about all these loons that I grew up with and spent my life with.

However the fact that the old loons are dead does not mean that there aren't new ones. Sometimes when I walk through town with my family I still feel like I am in an asylum and the guards have painted the ceiling so it looks like the sky.

Isn't there a movie where this guy lives in a huge studio and everyone around him is an actor while the whole world watches him live his life and he doesn't know anything about it?

It's Lorelai's doing that I know that movie.

Lorelai

Slowly I walk the last few meters to my destination and stop.

TBC